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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Also someone mentions the 'quoted emails' from Scott? What are we talking about here? Some very innocuous emails that got leaked?

A particular e-mail from 2014. There's an imgur archive here, though the format is awful.

The OccidentalAscent link is pretty much dousing your hands with water before taking a nice big grip on the giant electrified do-not-touch of racial IQs. While I think the analysis puts too strong a thumb on the scales and don't agree with it, it is an analysis than a screed... but it's still hard to see Scott's use as anything but acceptance of the argument even if not necessarily its conclusions, in ways that the broader progressive movement considered (even contemporaneously: Middlebury wasn't until 2017, but it didn't exactly come out of the blue) and considers unacceptable. They're e-mails where Scott literally types out the phrase "I will appreciate if you NEVER TELL ANYONE I SAID THIS, not even in confidence," so even contemporaneously, I think he knew they weren't likely to be read as innocuous then, and things have gotten a lot worse in a lot of ways since.

Which wasn't bright, especially since Scott and Topher had already been fighting over feminism and Atheism+-related concerns already.

Thank you for the link.

'Partially correct or non-provably non-correct' is just a fancy way of saying that he doesn't know! That's a pretty anodyne thing to say in objective terms, though it would obviously get you to a gulag in Stalin's Russia.

The 'if you tell anyone I said this I will probably either leave the internet forever or seek some sort of horrible revenge' bit is quite sad. I wouldn't feel very threatened by Scott like I might be if I betrayed the confidence of some thuggish musclebound tough-guy with a gun collection. I rather hope he got his revenge though.

Some guy once said that 'the best revenge is massive success', and I'd say he's there. Haters can seethe, etc.

I dunno, comparing him to his old nemeses (nemesii?) Scott is doing better than Arthur Chu and David Gerard, but worse than Charles Clymer.

At least Scott lost his balls less literally, but he's definitely not in the inner party like Clymer, whose various old offenses you're not even allowed to mention any more, as the man who did them officially never existed.

If you count Vox as a singular nemesis, I'd say it's hard to call him a winner there too.

Charles Clymer

No idea who this person was, so tried Google. Very interesting results, as in - none. One mention of past as "Charles Clymer" but no connection with "Charlotte Adora Elizabeth Clymer".

Tried Edge (which I hate but was testing to see if it gave me different results) and yes indeed it did, a lot of articles about this person's prior bad behaviour.

So it's fascinating to me that Google very clearly is burying stuff about trans people that is in any way negative - or maybe just even "dead-naming".

Their Wikipedia bio is great too; though they are (converted?) Episcopalian, they work for Catholics for Choice (which is the organisation of and for liberal/dissident cultural Catholics who want legal abortion - slightly more aggressive on this than Pelosi and Biden who are just run-of-the-mill 'oh yah abortion great, human right, legal, not my job to impose my beliefs on others, of course I'm fully Catholic' types): they're "director of communications and strategy at Catholics for Choice"

So I don't know if they were raised Catholic and then took the soup, or were Episcopalian all along, but thanks Chuck for interfering in the doctrines of my faith to bring change about to your liking.

nemeses (nemesii?)

Nemeses (Latin, third declension: 1 2), nemeseis (Greek, third declension: 1 2), or nemesises (English)

"Nemesii" would be the plural of "nemesius" (Latin, second declension).

Thank you, someday I will finally learn what a god damn declension is.

There’s a reason the term “quokka” gets thrown around as an insulting term for rationalists. It’s hard for them to imagine others will be hostile to them for no reason besides petty political differences, to the point of trying to destroy your job and reputation